


Swans in Venice

by voxane



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam and Declan Friendship, Declan character study, Gen, Gratuitous Food Metaphors, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Pynch mentioned, but Ronan is never 'on screen', if you know me it's my Classic (tm) diner meltdown scene, takes place before CDTH, the general concept of family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24101962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxane/pseuds/voxane
Summary: Declan Lynch’s phone shouldn’t have been vibrating against his thigh. He had laid out painstaking measures to work out very specific do not disturb settings during internship hours so that he’d only be bothered in true emergency scenarios.The most frightening by far being Church Valley Medical - Henrietta, Virginia.---Declan and Adam meet by happenstance under grim circumstances. But perhaps it isn't all bad.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 62





	Swans in Venice

**Author's Note:**

> I know I promised I had something 'fluffy' and 'fun' but heavy and cathartic is so much more natural to me lol. This isn't nearly as dark as Nightcall, and I think the dichotomy between Declan and Adam is super interesting. Also grilling your little bros boyfriend over pancakes is great. Enjoy!

Declan Lynch’s phone shouldn’t have been vibrating against his thigh. He had laid out painstaking measures to work out _very_ specific do not disturb settings during internship hours so that he’d only be bothered in true emergency scenarios.  
  
Matthew’s personal number would only go through after three consecutive call attempts. Ronan’s at two. The only few numbers that’d go straight through were Matthew’s school, Mr. Andrews (the politician he directly campaigned for that still called him Dylan), and a few and far between emergency services.  
  
The most frightening by far being Church Valley Medical - Henrietta, Virginia.  
  
Declan’s heart plummeted through his stomach, a comet of emotions burning up in the atmosphere of his rib cage. 

He was truly distraught because he made the very human flaw of swallowing, where everyone in the vicinity of his cubicle could see him.  
  
“Christ, you look terrible,” Fairlady said in a bitter cocktail of a tone, sympathy soured by her judgment. “Get some water, we don’t need you passing out on us.” She slapped his shoulder and he jumped high enough to use it as an excuse to jolt to standing. And if he was standing, he was moving somewhere where he could finally answer his phone.  
  
He walked as fast as socially acceptable out of the office space, into the hallway, and already answered the pulsing device before he stepped into the single-stall bathroom delegated _for the ladies_ , but Declan couldn’t find it in him to worry about the percent chance of sexual harassment allegations, not when-  
  
“Hello,” he gasped. “Declan Lynch, speaking”  
  
“Hello Mr. Lynch, this is Veronica from Church Valley Medical. I’m calling on behalf of your dependent, Ronan Lynch-”

“Is he alive?” Declan was all but hyperventilating, struggling to keep his breaths shallow enough they couldn't be interpreted as distressed over the speakers.  
  
“Oh,” The word sounded sucker punched out of her and it took all of Declan’s restraint to not launch his phone into the ceramic tile wall. “Yes, his condition is stable-”  
  
“I’m on my way.” Declan shoved his thumb on the red phone symbol, a very paltry and unsatisfying way to end this call, and shoved it into his pants pocket. He stormed out of the bathroom in a whirlwind and let the secretary know there was an emergency and would update them on his status when he had the chance.  
  
It was a fucking joke. Any concern Declan wouldn’t be there to digitally file paperwork, or tabulate expenses was so much more paramount than the breath and blood of another man.  
  
He truly didn’t have time for a moral breakdown. Not when he had to see how fast he could get a Volvo s90 across state lines without police suspicion all while letting Matthew know he was out of town, everything is okay, and he could order anything off GrubHub on his card- all the while trying to find anything on the radio that could try to quell his jackhammering heart into something adjacent to manageable.  
  
Two out of the three would have to do.  
  
It was nightfall by the time Declan reached Henrietta. The town was sunset sleepy, few scattered lights lulling the workday to bed. All the buildings soft and shadowing around the edges, quaint in their simplicity and quickly fading as he pulled out until the black rolling sea of the country hills, still and dark with the hospital beaconing like a grim lighthouse at the crest of a hill.  
  
When Declan pulled into a parking space, he desperately wanted to stay in his car. Everything made sense within the walls of his Volvo, and he wouldn’t test fate by crossing the automatic doors into Schroedinger’s hospital to make the coin flip if his brother was dead or alive - or something infinitely more complicated and wretched in between.  
  
But he refused to be another of Ronan’s guardians to abandon him. When he looked into the rearview he swore Naill’s eyes were reflected back at him, rather than his own. It was uncanny enough to that propel him outside into the dewy night. The car muffled a moan of a beep as Declan locked it, and he shoved his hand in his pocket, ready to place his odds on his brother's life.

The hospital doors whirred artificially to let him into a perpetually in-limbo waiting room, dotted with constellations of the weary and worried huddled together. There was only one lonely star of a hunched figure, and it caught Declan’s attention immediately. He blinked as if his eyes or mind betrayed him, but of course he recognized the tired pile of boy and he definitely recognized that distant, joyless stare through the speckled linoleum tile.  
  
“Parrish?”  
  
Declan didn’t mean to say the thought out loud, but he supposed he wasn’t trying to keep it to himself either. He instantly regretted it, as Adam’s name seemed to hit like a lightning strike to his spine. Once all the static energy dissipated, he melted into the chair with a heavy with a new layer of exhaustion.  
  
“Declan,” He said it with a lacquer tone. Declan was all too familiar with it and wasn’t sure if he was willing to see how rotted the wood was underneath his shiny surface. 

He wasn’t sure he had a choice.

“Did they-” Adam started before going stock still, holding his breath like he was trying not to drown in his own thoughts. “Did the nurses update you on his condition?”  
  
Declan’s blood ran cold as he realized.  
  
 _Oh._

 _He’s here for Ronan._ _  
__  
_“I just got here,” Declan exhaled, slowly. He wished dearly he had the time and distance to observe Parrish, to unknot the puzzle as to _why_ this entire situation came to be. Not that more time or a ‘go getter attitude’ would give any headway as to which of God's forces brought them together, here of all places. All those thoughts avalanched into indiscernible debris with the mere breeze of a hand near his shoulder. He whipped around to a doe-eyed woman in cheery pink scrubs that matched the shade of blush over her cheekbones.  
  
“Mr. Lynch?” She asked, and Declan barely had the energy to force politeness, but he surely didn’t have the energy to defy his nature.  
  
So he shook her hand, and he smiled. She smiled back, which meant that at the very least Ronan _was_ still alive, and he let his heart slow to a jog, even if his spine was still starched. He heard _broken leg_ and _mild concussion_ , and it drew him so far from panic mode that he caught Adam Parrish wringing his hands in his peripheral.  
  
“...we just need to keep an eye on his condition a little longer, but he should be fine for visitors in a few hours. If you’d like to get dinner you absolutely can, his condition is stable. We just want to make sure there aren’t any lingering symptoms we’d have to take preventative measures for. We’ll give you a call once he’s ready for visitors.”  
  
Declan, logically, had to be starving. He had a protein bar around noontime, and some errant Tums that had no nutritional value to speak of, but calmed his stomach enough that it gave him the illusion of nourishment.  
  
He thought to glance at Adam Parrish, but Declan recalled how it always looked like the Aglionby uniform wore him rather than the other way around. He thanked the doctor again, bookending the conversation with another firm handshake. He turned to Adam, who stared at him in a way he wanted to call childlike if there weren’t years of pain in purple pigment hollowing out his eyes.  
  
“You like pancakes, Parrish?”

* * *

Declan wasn’t sure how to respond when Adam offered to drive, he never enjoyed the power shift of having the caretaker role out of his hands.  
  
He, however, had all of his Declan-isms fall out of the chamber and bounce echoes around his brain at the sight of a BMW key nestled in Adam Parrish’s palm, with a pewter Claddagh keychain dangling from it.  
  
There was too much to unpack with the implications, and he simply had no means to with the deluge of emotions drowning him at the unwanted memory of the last time he had to ride passenger in this predator of a car.  
  
He kept his nerves straight by reading aloud directions to Adam, who didn’t bother to ask why he didn’t just let the GPS do it. Declan returned the favor by ignoring the awful static cacophony that masqueraded as music coming out of the long since blown out speakers that was no doubt Ronan’s doing.  
  
They both needed whatever they could get right now.  
  
Which is precisely why they pulled into the grungiest diner in the state crammed underneath the highway for the least atmospheric dining experience. The inside didn’t offer much better, drab in that way all diners were.  
  
Declan would never admit it, but he adored it here. It was a regular spot for after church breakfast for the remaining orphan’s Lynch. Niall always sneered at it’s tacky St. Patty’s Day brand of Irish pride.  
  
Naturally, it was the first place he went after Niall’s body was buried (as soon as Ronan’s was safe as he could be under the watch of Richard Gansey the Third, and Matthew had cried himself to the shelter of unconsciousness). He spent a sleepless night with enough cups of coffee that the waitress simply brought him the pot, and stared at a cross stitch tapestry of an Irish blessing he wasn’t sure brought him comfort or rage, or crashing waves of both.

He hoped, today, it could offer comfort.

A bubbly waitress greeted them and dialed it back at one sweep of their expressions. They were nestled into an innocuous corner, directly under the tapestry that kept him company just a few years ago. Declan must have been staring because Adam gave the wall hanging a cursory look. He squinted like he was supposed to recognize it from somewhere, or about to quizzed on Lynch family emotional trauma.  
  
It probably wasn’t too far off from the truth.  
  
Might as well get it over with.  
  
“Were you the one who found him?” Declan asked, not quite landing on good cop or bad cop. 

Adam dragged his weary eyes from the menu to Declan’s granite carved DC lawman’s face that said he didn’t have the energy to protest being interrogated. He nodded solemnly, and cast eyes down again while the waitress brought them their coffee. Adam didn’t even look at the cup before taking a swig like his insides were close to freezing over without it. Declan took a cautious sip of his own cup while Adam thawed out.  
  
“He,” Adam took in a shaky breath. “He looked mangled. Just flat on the ground, I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. My hands were shaking too much to check his pulse.”  
  
Adam seemed to go from thawing to a weeping melt too fast for his mind to handle, and Declan was doubting if he still had the stomach for coffee. 

“What happened?” The diplomat crumbled beneath him, and all that was left was the skeleton of an older brother. He grabbed the crock of sugar on the table. Normally he liked his coffee black, but he could take energy in any form he could get it right now.  
  
Adam held his mug still, staring at the still black lake like there was a reflection of the gruesome scene floating in there.  
  
“He was working on the roof of the long barn, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.”

“He jumped.” Declan didn't realize he spoke out loud, only when he _felt_ his vocal cords reverberate did he notice. The low rumble couldn't translate the impact of what he said, but he could infer when Adam Parrish spilled his cup of coffee with a dramatic clamor that it was something that should've never passed his lips. 

“What?” Adam shot the question, a point blank bullet of incredulousness. Adam Parrish had a spine rigid and his trigger finger ready to pick fight or flight. Declan kept his eyes fixed on him while the coffee painstakingly counted the seconds of silence with overflowing drips onto the ratty carpet. 

Their waitress came by to sop up the coffee ocean on their tables, and chirp some chipper assurances that it wasn't a big deal, and she’d be right back with a fresh pot that neither of them replied to. Without any coffee to count time, this silence felt eternal  
  
“He fell.” Adam finally whispered. “It was an accident.”  
  
Declan swiftly flipped through his Rolodex of PR phrases to smooth over the situation, but Adam didn’t give him the chance with a question so childlike and pitiful it stopped him in his tracks.  
  
“Why...would you think he jumped?”  
  
Their stare was a standoff. Except Parrish was unarmed. That sort of thing never bothered Declan, having the upper hand meant living but...  
  
Maybe, this once, there wasn’t a threat.  
  
“How long....how much do you know about Ronan?” Declan thinned his eyes. You can never be too sure.  
  
“Are you asking if I know about his dreaming, or if I slept with him?”  
  
Declan was sucker punched.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he coughed. “Neither! God, did you really?”  
  
Adam blushed, and that sealed the deal.  
  
He really couldn’t handle much more of this without some Goddamn breakfast. Declan reached an arm back to rifle through the pockets of his sport coat to grab an undiscerning handful of antacids and shoved them into his mouth.  
  
“Um,” Adam started before he was immediately distracted by the waitress's presence.  
  
“All set to order?” Her drawl was thicker than syrup. Adam kept his eyes on the table.  
  
“Just the coffee is fine, thank you.” Adam delivered the line, well rehearsed.  
  
“Oh for-,” Declan bit his tongue. “You need to eat something, Parrish.”  
  
“I’m really not hungry.” Adam insisted. He wouldn’t look at Declan either. Declan grit his teeth so he wouldn’t audibly sigh.  
  
“I’ll have an egg white omelet with avocado, turkey bacon and feta. Wheat for the toast,” Declan rattled off, the plastic of the menu whining as he closed it. Adam was huddled over his coffee. Declan thinned his gaze to meet the rippled reflection of Adam’s tired eyes in the liquid sludge. He was very aware of the travel size Pepcid packet in the pocket of his slacks.  
  
“And Pancakes for the table, please.”  
  
Adam kept his gaze steady in the coffee, but Declan could see the tenseness of gnashed teeth in the set of his jaw.  
  
“You got it hon, I’ll put that right in for you.” Their server smiled with wide lacquer lips, and popped the pen back in her hair and the notepad in her apron pocket on the side of her hip. “Good choice, we’re famous for our flapjacks you know.”  
  
Declan smiled. This shitty hole in the wall wasn’t famous for anything. “I know, my brothers and I get them all the time.”  
  
“Well ain’t that sweet as sugar. Lemme know if you boys need any more coffee.”  
  
Adam must have had a sense for exactly how many steps were out of earshot, because once she was about 8 steps away he raised pointed eyes up to meet Declan’s.  
  
“I said I was fine with coffee.” Adam laid his words like a sprung trap, and Declan merely assessed them. Sure, Adam knew he was smarter than the average bear, and all too familiar with this game.  
  
“I wasn’t lying.”  
  
Adam tilted his head a degree to the left, as if to mime ‘beg pardon?’  
  
“I’d come here with Matthew or Ronan. Both, sometimes. We’d get pancakes for the table, Even when Matthew would order his own.” Declan couldn’t help but let a smile bloom on to his face soft as a drop of ink into water. “It’s tradition.”

Adam was silent, and looked back into his coffee. He took a long lukewarm swig.  
  
“Ronan likes pancakes?” He asked, with just a hint of childlike wonder of learning something new.  
  
“Everyone likes pancakes,” Declan said as if it was a universal truth. “He and Matthew would argue whether to get blueberry or chocolate chip. Matthew almost always got his way, even though he’d smear chocolate all over his face.”  
  
Adam nodded, now wearing his own private smile briefly before wilting back into concern ill fit for his face.  
  
“You never answered why you think he would jump.”  
  
Declan rifled through his pocket to grab the crumpled packet with his antacid. He needed something to do with his hands, and maybe Pepcid wasn’t the pill that could fix this situation but he felt strange not trying to do something to improve it.  
  
He swallowed the tablets with a mouthful of black coffee, and didn’t think about the contradiction.  
  
“Surely Gansey told you about his suicide attempt.”  
  
Declan laid his cards on the table, as if his hand was good.  
  
“Those were his dreams, it wasn’t him.”  
  
Adam’s hand was significantly worse. Declan’s frown was thin, the taste of stale coffee lingered on his tongue and it showed on his expression. He forced a smile on his face as the waitress plopped down a fat stack of fluffy pancakes, complete with a perfectly square pat of butter liquid soft around the corners. They thanked her as she moseyed off back to the kitchen. Declan cut out the thinnest slice of stack with surgical precision and popped it into his mouth. He let the cakey texture melt on his tongue, flavor covering him like a well worn duvet. It made the next part easier. He swallowed. 

“Ronan’s dreams are his everything.” Declan thought of Matthew, his bird familiar or the ill-dressed little girl that ran around with the goats. “Nothing about them is unintentional. Eat, Parrish. I can’t finish these on my own.”  
  
Adam wearily complied, cutting out a bite with the side of his fork.  
  
“I know. I just.” Adam sighed, fork still resting on the plate with the untouched bit of pancake he carved out. “I don’t like thinking about that Ronan. He hasn’t had to feel that way in a while.”  
  
Adam’s voice was cauterized, all scar tissue. The kind you only got from putting your hand in the flame. Something like the pain of understanding. Declan wasn’t sure if the familiarity of it was comforting or terrifying.  
  
Adam finally ate his bite of pancakes, so Declan took another sliver for himself.  
  
“What’s he working on? At the barns.” The word _home_ was on the tip of Declan’s tongue, but he couldn’t bear the weight of it. Even though it was for Ronan. And probably Adam.

“I don’t fully get it,” Adam admitted, but the burden of death and dying was untangled from his words. “Some sort of new irrigation system? He’s dreaming some like, upside down sprinkler things that wick moisture from the air? I thought it’d make the air too dry but he says he’s got it. And a new fence for the goats. He’s just building that, though. Like with his hands.”  
  
“Sounds like he’s doing well.” Declan nodded. When his family's dreams weren’t undoing any thread of normalcy in his life he could see the wonder in it. Or maybe it was the wonder of Ronan really finding his place at the barns.  
  
Maybe it was the wonder of knowing he was safe, and actually believing it.  
  
“He...” Adam pushed his pancakes around his plate in a little river of syrup. “He works really hard.”  
  
Declan used the pancakes as an excuse for some contemplative silence. _He works really hard_ was so deep in layers of code specific to what Adam thought was Declan’s vernacular.

  
Ronan was working hard, thusly Ronan was doing well.

Ronan was doing well perhaps not by Declan standards, but he wouldn’t disappoint you.

Adam knew enough about your relations with Ronan that He could word it in a way appealing to you.

Adam knew enough about Ronan that He could confidently tell him this.

  
It made Declan uneasy thinking about Adam at the barns looking as much as place in there as the picturesque rolling hills shielded it from the outside world. He wondered how many nights Adam slept in his old bedroom, or the couch, before they were comfortable enough to scrunch themselves into Ronan’s full sized bed.  
  
He didn’t want to think about anything more than that.  
  
He brought his attention back to the Adam Parrish in front of him, delicately drizzling syrup on the scattered bites of pancakes over his plate.  
  
“I’m glad you were there to help him.” Declan said.  
  
Adam jumped, the slightest bit, with a muffled noise and his fork jammed in his mouth.  
  
“I didn’t do anything.” Adam said, misery soaked in his expressions like the syrup-soggy pancakes. “I checked his pulse and called 911.”  
  
Declan exhaled through his nose, and leaned into the worn oak chair with a squeak. He looked into sun-stained blocky Irish hills that lived over the hanging words on the cross stitch. Declan remembered the greens in the picture being much more verdant. The light must’ve worn everything down to something more muted, so all the colors shared a hue. He was sure it was the truth because he certainly didn’t have any more brightness in his eyes now than he did back then.  
  
He knew Adam must be looking at it with him, and Declan wondered if Adam could see all the years of vibrancy that time snatched away.  
  
Adam wore an expression so heavy it was a wonder his chin was still up.  
  
Declan rifled through his pocket and dropped an antacid dead center on the table, and said nothing. Adam dragged his fatigued eyes from following the words on the wall to the words behind Declan’s intentions.  
  
He reached out two dainty fingers, eyes on Declan the entire time like he was waiting from him to snatch the pill away, or impale his cautious hand with a fork. His every nerve tensed for self defense.  
  
Declan was familiar with the feeling, perhaps in a different flavor. Similarly, Declan thought Adam was familiar with the crime of having the color of your world stolen hue by hue.  
  
Adam popped the pill in his mouth, and took a swig of coffee.  
  
Declan smiled a wry, sour kind of smile. The taste of it had a nostalgic pleasantness to him.  
  
“Finish eating, then I’ll drop you off at the hospital.”  
  
“You’re not stayin?” Adam asked, and the words sounded like a different language around the pancake in his mouth. Declan opened his mouth to chide him as if he was Matthew, who for as polite a boy he certainly struggled with table manners, and he closed it. There was a different kind of smile pulling at his face now. Something smaller and softer. 

There were very few things Declan shared with Niall Lynch. Declan was handsome, but in a catalog manner that was generic and interchangeable. He had Niall’s dark hair, but it was unremarkable without his wild curls. His nose and cheekbones were a meager reproduction of the marble features Niall had, with too many amateur mistakes.  
  
But this, this barely there smile was the same smile Niall had in the cliffhanger pauses of his stories. The smile after he said Ronan’s name. The same smile Ronan had when he looked Parrish like he was being any kind of subtle.  
  
It scared the shit of Declan.  
  
“You said Ronan’s doing fine, right? He doesn’t need big brother bailing him out of this one,” Declan rested an elbow on the table, picking at soggy saccharine remains of their shared meal. 

“I’m trusting him to you.”  
  
“I’ll keep you up to date on his condition.” Adam nodded the kind of nod that was usually matched with a firm handshake, and a price tag. “Ronan has your number.”  
  
“Christ, Parrish, we’re eating breakfast not day trading. You can just tell me how he’s doing if he can’t text me himself.” Not that texting was in Ronan’s language, but that was beside the point.  
  
What was the point, though, was scary in the same way that he had his father’s smile. Scary in a way that he was beginning to understand Ronan’s obsession with Gansey, Parrish and the little spitfire he couldn’t remember the name of. It was something that shifted the constants in Declan’s life.  
  
If water was just as thick as blood, it really mucked up his blacks and whites into a muddy grey Declan wasn’t comfortable living in.  
  
The point was, though, is that Declan did understand it and he had to face it head on.  
  
“You can tell me how you’re doing, too.”  
  
“Why?” Adam asked it without a beat, and Declan laughed out loud. Adam was a pinkish shade of _faux pas_ , and looked as concerned as he did shamefaced. He stared at Declan like he’d lost his mind, and Declan thought he might have.  
  
“I didn’t mean-” Adam started.  
  
“You don’t need to explain yourself. Neither of us are emotional like that. You chose Ronan- or he chose you. Regardless, he trusts with....this.” Declan felt lost of language, but there probably wasn’t an all encompassing word in the English language to explain all the complexities of his relationship with Ronan, or Ronan’s relationship with the world. “So I trust you with him. I know that’s not an easy job.”  
  
“He’s not a job.”  
  
Declan pinched the bridge of his nose. He truly was no good at this at all.  
  
“That’s not what I meant. I meant that I care about how you're doing, too.” It was strange that the plainest terms were sometimes the hardest.  
  
“Sorry.” The word was wrought out of Adam’s mouth. “I’m not trying to be difficult.”  
  
“No need for apologies.” This was getting too weird without them. “I can help you look at schools. I can give you a recommendation for Georgetown. It’s not Ivy League, but it's a good school,” Adam furrowed his brows so tightly that Declan worried he might drown in the crevasses of concern. He probably thought Declan had lost his mind.  
  
“I’ll get the check.” More so, he’d get a way out of this conversation. Declan placed his hands on the arms of the chair and lifted up with prim finality.  
  
“You didn’t even touch your food,” Adam commented, staring at his now cold breakfast. Declan hadn’t even noticed he had forgotten it, head full enough to trick his body that it felt the same.  
  
“The pancakes were more than enough. I’ll ask the waitress to box it up for me.” He didn’t let Adam have the chance to retort as he walked over to the register and made the small talk that was as instinctive to him as breathing.  
  
Declan swiped his card and left a generous tip. It seemed only appropriate, like an apology for dragging his miserable life into this place time and time again. While their ancient machine churned out some God awful noise to generate the receipt, his eyes were glued to the tapestry.  
  
There was a part of him that knew it had a price tag, and Declan could easily afford it and very much wanted it. That part of him was much larger than he’d ever admit out loud. He wasn’t sure even he could live with the guilt of uprooting it from where it had lived so long. The square of dust left on the wall would consume him whole. Declan wasn’t sure whether the cross stitch would look more out of place anywhere else in the world, or if the wall would look more lonely without it.  
  
Never mind his need for it being the loudest of them all, and he didn’t know how to quell that need with any ownership over something that fundamentally wasn't his. His frustrations became frustrated pen strokes as he signed the barely visible receipt, and as he lifted his head back up to hand over the scrap of paper the answer couldn't have been more obvious.  
  
“I’m sorry for the trouble, but could I also get a gift certificate?”  
  


* * *

  
Declan gave Adam a firm handshake and a plain white #10 envelope with the flap tucked in rather than sealed. Adam stared back at him with knit brows and lips tight as he tried to clunkily translate the actions from ‘Declan’ into something more native to his own language. It was something that never quite sounded right, in words. But he gave it a shot anyways. 

“A get-well gift for Ronan, whenever he’s up for using it.”  
  
“Thank you,” Adam took it without any hesitance.  
  
Declan felt he had so much more on his itinerary, that this position called for several more action items before he clocked out for the night. But Adam Parrish had his father's keychain in his pocket and his brother's heart in his hands.  
  
It was still hard for Declan to trust that it was okay, but it’s what he had to do.  
  
“Goodnight, Parrish. Reach out to me if you need anything.”  
  
Adam sent similar sentiments, and Declan sat back down in his Volvo that felt the least like a hearse he could recall in awhile.

The car started with a polite rumble, and quieted down to a humming growl that was low enough that he could make out the tinny voices crackling from his radio speaker. Declan usually liked the white noise of talk radio to lull him to an auto-piloted state for his long drives between Virginia and DC. It was the closest thing he got to rest.  
  
Tonight, he thinks, he’d like some music. 

He fumbled with his phone to try and find the seldom used Spotify app, and stumbled over the interface until he found something that few would call a guilty pleasure other than Declan Lynch. But Pleasure and Guilt lived in holy matrimony, till death do them part, inside of him. He was starting not to mind Guilt’s company so long he was able to have both parties present.  
  
So he tapped his finger on the wheel of his car to music that Niall Lynch would absolutely hate, and it made his heartbeat in double time to the music. He tore through God knows how many albums, not nearly enough to pay off even a fraction of cultural debt but enough to keep his lips from tugging down on his face. 

He pulled into his single garage attached to his townhome apartment, and Declan let the car idle, fearful the feeling might die with the music. This could all very well be an artificial high, and the moment he leaves his car he’d be back into reality- solemn silence in a barren dark room.  
  
Business as usual.  
  
Declan kept his eyes fixed forward as he turned the key of a car like tearing off a bandaid, and didn’t show any signs of pain as he stepped out into his home.  
  
The heels of his brogues clicked across cement, echoing as he twisted the knob of the door to his kitchen and didn’t blink as brightness poured all over him.  
  
“Oh,” Matthew started and it sounded more like ‘ow’ with his mouth full of cheese and grease. He sat at the kitchen island, kicking his legs gleefully as he ate pizza straight out of the box.He crammed the rest of the slice in his maw and drowned it with an unsightly amount of soda until his throat was clear, and he let out a crisp ‘ah’. “Hey, D. Where’ve you been?”  
  
“Just checking in on Ronan,” He slid out of his suit jacket, to hang on the velvet hanger in his closet and pushed up the sleeves of his button down. He sat himself next to Matthew, helping himself to a cold slice of pizza he knew he’d regret in a few hours “He had a mishap at the barns and broke his leg.”  
  
“Aw, what, that blows. When are we visiting? I wanna sign his cast.” Matthew, smiley and ignorant, simply grabbed another slice of pizza grinning like he won the lottery. If only it was that simple. Perhaps, at least, it didn’t have to be that complicated.  
  
“We’ll see him for Mass. He’ll need a ride to church, he can’t drive himself.”  
  
Matthew nodded, and grabbed his phone with both hands, humming as he chewed.  
  
“I’m gonna send the funniest meme. It’s so good Declan, this dude in a hospital bed sends a selfie and tells the other guy _‘I lived bi_ -’”  
  
Matthew was cut off by Declan’s phone screaming for attention as it vibrated in his pants pocket. He took it out, skeptically, as he opened to a text message from a number that wasn’t registered in his phone.  
  
 _Ronan loved your gift. Don’t tell him I told you._ _  
__  
__This is Adam, obviously. He’s doing well, and has enough energy to talk back to me._ _  
__  
_“Oh your friends with Adam now? That’s so great, he can finally come to Church with us. It was like, weird, that Ronan would basically go to his boyfriends house every week and not see him, right?” Mathew was leaned in close enough to fog up his phone screen.  
  
“It’s rude to read someone else’s texts,” Declan said in a tone that got Matthew to sit back in his chair in perfect posture. He muttered a nonchalant sorry, before fully distracted by eating Declan’s discarded crusts.

_Thanks again, Parrish. I appreciate everything you’ve done for him._

He had barely sent the message before his phone buzzed again.  
  
 _May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past._ _  
__  
_It was disarming, how quick Adam caught on. Using Declan’s vulnerability to show his own, and his own words as an olive branch.  
  
It was quite clever. He could only imagine if that tricky mind was used against him instead and it became increasingly clear why Ronan was so infatuated with him. _  
_  
“But he can come, right,” Matthew said rather than asked.  
  
“I don’t think Adam goes to church.” Declan said it carefully, but Matthew looked crestfallen nonetheless. Declan had to swallow to surprise a wry Lynch smile from sneaking onto his face. 

“Why don’t we invite him to after Mass lunch? We can get pancakes.”  
  
“Oh that’d be the _best_ . Tell me we can go to Dubliners. They have the best chocolate chip pancakes, Adam has to try them.”  
  
“I’m sure we can work that out. You need to wash up for bed, though. It's a school night.”  
  
Matthew groaned, but padded up the stairs regardless. So Declan sat alone, for a moment. It was a little surreal. There was never a world where Declan Lynch would have a pop song in his head and room temperature pizza in his gut. But his world was ever expanding - no, rather, shifting. The things he knew for certain looked very different with all these new sources of light. _  
__  
_He slid his phone in his back pocket, and thought about the envelope that lived there briefly. He thought about a guaranteed trip back to an unremarkable diner and the weight of the word ‘tradition’. He tried to imagine Ronan’s face when he saw the gift certificate, and the blessing scrawled onto it. He hoped it’d have the same gleam of wonder he had when he listened to their father’s stories, but it was naive to think that such a thing still existed. Perhaps something close to it, whatever emotion existed in the scattered beams of light that came from it’s prism.  
  
He saw the light to Matthew's room flicker out, so he boxed up the remaining pizza, and put it wherever there was room in his fridge. He didn't bother to rearrange his stools, and he didn’t worry about this morning’s dishes still in his sink.

Everything was exactly where it should be

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Thoughtsappear and Softieghost for the Beta! They're both extremely talented writers, so please check out their AO3s!!


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